Libraries, worried that they're becoming nothing more than a pit stop for stingy internet users and DVD borrowers, are preparing to try something drastic. They're going to stock the books that people actually want to read. Via The NYTimes: Urban Fiction Goes From Streets to Public Libraries

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

1. Because for every corny thing she does: "J.K. Rowling will help launch The Tales of Beedle the Bard by hosting a tea party." she then goes and does something infinitely cooler: "Rowling has waived her royalties for the book, with net proceeds from the sale to go to the charity she co-founded, the Children's High Level Group, which works with vulnerable children in eastern Europe."2. And then there's the glasses. Hot!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

News item, care of WAPT, Missouri:White Women Push Suicide Rate HigherThe suicide rate in the U.S. is on the rise, according to a report from Johns Hopkins University. Researchers found that the overall rate rose 0.7 percent from 1999 to 2005. But the rate for white women ages 40 to 64 rose 3.9 percent.

Story idea:Title: Suicide and the CityPlot: Four professional, narcissistic, middle-aged, White women jump Manolo Blahniks first into this season's crazy new fad: killing themselves. (Okay, so this one's going to need a bit of padding out if it's going to fill a mass market, but how tough could it be to script twenty-some-odd chapters of their sex, booze and shopping exploits?)

We walk past the Fairmont and down two steep blocks of Mason Street to enter the Argonaut Book Shop, at 786 Sutter St. Based on their study of production notes from the film, Leventhal and Kraft are certain that this shop was the inspiration for the Argosy Book Shop in "Vertigo," where Scottie meets old Pop Leibel, proprietor, California history buff and explainer of Madeleine's family secrets.

"My dad knew Hitchcock," explains Argonaut owner Robert Haines Jr., who, like Pop, specializes in rare books on the Gold Rush and old California. He says his father, Robert Haines Sr., who founded the store on Kearny Street, was the director's model for Pop Leibel.

"There's a scene where Pop pulls out a Zippo and taps a cigarette - and that's just what my father did," he says. "For the last 40 years, I've had people coming in here, asking, 'Is this the shop where Alfred Hitchcock' did so and so?' "

"And it is," Leventhal says. "Hitchcock once said, 'This is what a bookshop should look like,'" referring to the original shop on Kearny.

Nothing sells like success catastrophe. Via The Guardian UK: The publishing deals struck at the Frankfurt Book Fair set the tone for the books trade all around the world...Publishers may still be bullish about their prospects, but the credit crunch is already driving big deals for books with a financial flavour.

The title of the piece is 'Locally and nationally, public libraries are searching for new ways to stay relevant,' but The Star-Telegram buries the reason for this way down in paragraph seven: Libraries are increasingly shifting their focus to new services that can entice younger users, many of whom are less interested in all those shelves of books. Kids: Just one of the many reasons I'm pro-choice.

Semi-related, via The Chicago Tribune: The percent of 17-year-olds who do not read for pleasure has doubled in the past 20 years, according to a recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts..."We're talking [about reading] a play, short story, novel or poem in the last 12 months...It's a low bar. We're not even saying you had to complete the book," said Sunil Iyengar, the group's director of research and analysis. (Editor's note: To have your faith in children magically restored, click here.)